Reply To: Doom and gloom

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Pagan deities are aspects of nature, Pagan thinking – and mythology – are cyclical, centered on the Wheel of the Year: the planting season (‘Spring’), the growing season (‘Summer’), the harvesting season (‘Fall’) and the fallow season (‘Winter’).

The ‘death’ of the Gods happens at the end of the harvest season – for the Celts that is Samhain (‘Halloween’), which was also their New Year, the Germans/Norse had their New Year at the Winter Solstice, when the Gods battle the Giants (= forces of winter, darkness and death), most everyone ‘dies’ – nature does appear to ‘die’ in the winter, at least in northern climes – to be reborn when the Sun Wheel turns again towards life, light and Spring. The Celtic version of Ragnarök would be the battle of Maige Tuairead between the ‘short & dark’ Fir Bolg and ‘tall & light’ Tuatha Dé Dannan, in which also pretty much everyone ‘dies’. The Arthurian cycle – being a retelling of Celtic myth in a form acceptable to medieval clergy – has the ‘duel’ between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which modern Wiccans have transformed into the duel between Holy King and Oak King, twice a year, at the Summer and Winter Solstices.

Linear thinking – the ‘final’ battle at the ‘end of time’ is an imported Abrahamic concept, foreign to European Pagan thinking.